56 



practically it is unsatisfactory because of lax management, town 

 politics, unnecessary expense in hiring labor for nominal jobs 

 such as patrolling streams, and inability to market the catch 

 to the best advantage. The cost of maintenance is excessive, 

 and the fish are not sufficiently protected from overfishing. 

 Almost the same lack of judgment in making regulations and 

 lack of initiative in their enforcement is found as under a free 

 fishing regime. If a town fishery could be placed on the same 

 basis as a private enterprise it would undoubtedly prove a suc- 

 cess, but such a situation can never occur as long as there 

 exists a lack of personal incentive among the men hired to op- 

 erate it. 



Mattapoisett River is here cited as an example of an unsuc- 

 cessful town-operated fishery, not because it is worse than others, 

 but because it so well illustrates the effect of town control upon 

 one of the best natural alewife streams. The fishery is con- 

 trolled by three towns, Rochester, Marion and Mattapoisett, 

 subdivisions of the old town of Rochester. When Marion and 

 Mattapoisett separated from Rochester, the alewife fishery 

 rights of each in the Mattapoisett River were maintained. The 

 fishery has been operated by the three towns, and the profits 

 or losses have been proportioned according to the amount of 

 taxable property in each town. Of recent years, instead of 

 being an asset it has become an expense, since between 1908 

 and 1917 deficits rather than profits have resulted in a fishery 

 which between 1861 and 1912 gave an average annual return 

 of $825.67. 



The decline of this fishery, which is strikingly shown by the 

 following table, may be attributed to three causes, all of which 

 might have been prevented by intelligent supervision: (1) so 

 many fish were taken from the stream that insufficient numbers 

 reached the spawning grounds; (2) the stream was allowed to 

 become impeded by cranberry bogs and obstructions; (3) the 

 expense of labor and materials in operating the herring weirs 

 was unnecessarily high : 



